It’s been 22 days since my last post. I am sorry that I have not
made time to sit and write. However, I did use my time to complete final
projects for sabbatical classes, bake cookies for parties, make jars of trail
mix to give as presents to the kids’ teachers, and spend time with friends and
family at parties and restaurants. It’s been festive and frenetic. But alas,
the holiday vacation has arrived, and I will be sure to do the hardest work of
writing, sitting down for an extended period of time and letting my fingers tap
along rows of buttons as I contemplate and communicate the ideas on my mind. At
the moment, while my husband and children watch Elf, I sit at the dining room
table and write.
In the vast landscape of American culture, there has been a
growing representation of diverse cultures and voices in literature and media.
I want to continue writing about identity which I began writing about In an
earlier post, “What Does America Stand For?”. One book that deepens my
understanding of this question is Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi.
Anyone who calls America home should read this novel. Yaa Gyasi
artfully weaves together several characters’ stories of the slave trade in
Ghana, the Middle Passage, slavery in the U.S., the Great Migration in America,
and modern day. The book takes the readers through the harrowing and
heartbreaking lives of families forcefully separated, the savage treatment of
slaves, and the repercussions of slavery on race relations. It forces us to
confront the trauma and scars left behind by over two hundred years of the
brutal business of slavery.
The novel begins with an unlikely union between Effia, daughter of
an Asante, and James, a British man of power who captures women and holds them
in a dungeon before shipping them as slaves to the New World. While young girls
are trapped in the dungeon, Effia, daughter of a tribal leader, is forced to
live a lonely life in the Cape Coast Castle as the wife of James. This is one
example of bondage seen in the text. Each subsequent chapter focuses on a
different character who has a connection to this character and this place.
The next chapter is about Esi, a fifteen year old girl trapped in
James’ Castle Dungeon. She is the daughter of a warrior but was captured and
now stands ankle-deep in excrement, wishing to be freed, then later raped by a
British officer. Her child will go on to be a slave in the U.S. These
characters’ lives and legacies continue throughout the book. Much later in the
story, Sonny, a descendant of Esi, struggles with segregation and drugs. For
him, “the practice of segregation meant that he had to feel his separateness as
inequality, and that was what he could not take.” (244).
The story moves mostly in chronological order and by the end, it
is modern day Alabama and New York. We, the readers, can see how the
characters’ lives are linked. Marjorie and Marcus, two college students who
meet at a party, return home to their roots in Ghana. Marjorie holds the black
stone necklace, a family heirloom, the stone that Esi, in the beginning of the
novel, hid in the “river of shit” in James’ Castle. Marcus, visiting this
country for the first time, becomes immersed in its elements. Together, they
confront where their ancestors suffered as slaves but also learn that they can
rise above the past and float in the present.
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